


How to Make Friends and Find Out About Coworkers

by tablelamp



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25871518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tablelamp/pseuds/tablelamp
Summary: Sophie likes to know who she's working with.  Is that a crime?
Comments: 3
Kudos: 33





	How to Make Friends and Find Out About Coworkers

As a rule, Sophie likes to know who she's working with. So when she starts working with Alec, Eliot, Parker, and Nate, she decides she's going to find out as much about them as she can, so there are no unpleasant surprises. (There have been unpleasant surprises in the past. Sophie dealt with them, but still, she prefers to avoid them if she can. And this time, she is certain that she can.)

She approaches Alec first because he seems friendly. She thinks she might be able to get him to have a casual chat with her, and she's not sure that will be true of any of the others.

"So how did you find out you could see the inside of the Vault?" Sophie asks, after several minutes of introductory pleasantries and lighthearted stories about past adventures (hers, carefully chosen).

Alec laughs. "I was a kid, and Nana lost a ring of hers somewhere in the woods, so we went out looking for it. I'd heard people talk about the Vault, how that's where people keep their most precious stuff, and I thought Nana's ring would be in there if I could get to it. So I sat down under a tree, right? And I concentrated really hard, and all of a sudden there was this blue flash, and I could see the inside of this big room--could walk around it too. I couldn't take anything with me, cause everything in there's tied to the magic of the person who put it in, but I could pick it up and look at it, move it around if I wanted to. And there was all kinds of cool stuff in there. Nana found me sitting there with my eyes closed, glowing a little bit, and she sorta snapped me out of it. But once I knew I could get in..." He smiles and does what appears to be some sort of gleeful dance move. "Any information in there is mine. And I can put my own stuff in too."

"Did you find the ring?" Sophie asks.

"Yup," Alec says. "Took about an hour. Nana's got finding magic though, so that was all her."

So that's Alec. Interesting. He's spent most of his life cultivating this particular skill, and takes an enormous amount of pride in it. Sophie can understand that; in some ways, she's quite similar, although she doesn't begin to approach the openness Alec has among those he trusts. It feels strange to be one of the people he has potential trust in; Sophie is used to teasing out trust from her marks, but it's unusual for anyone to trust her without her laying the groundwork for it first. Alec is already thinking of himself as working in partnership with all of them. Sophie hopes she never has cause to betray that partnership, but it's early days.

Not long after that, Parker approaches Sophie. "I heard you asking Hardison questions. Do you want to ask me questions?"

"If you like," Sophie says, trying not to seem as surprised as she is. "How did you get started?"

"I was hungry," Parker says. "If you have money, they give you food. So I had to figure out how to get money." She shrugs.

Sophie feels the stirrings of sympathy. "You must've been young."

Parker shrugs again. "They gave me a nickname down in the village."

It takes Sophie a minute, but she understands. "You're Pockets?"

Parker beams. "You've heard of me."

Everyone in the region has heard of Pockets, the thief who robbed the Duke and three of his guards on the same day. Some even think Pockets is a spirit because surely otherwise they would've been caught by now. That's a reputation Sophie can admire. "Is it true about the Duke and his guards?"

Parker shakes her head, looking extremely satisfied. "It was five guards, not three. Two of them were too embarrassed to report the theft." She hugs herself gleefully.

Sophie laughs. "Congratulations!"

Parker doesn't talk about what led her to a place where she had no money and no food, or why she had to take care of it herself instead of asking for help, but Sophie can fill in the broader details on her own. She hasn't missed the way Parker's eyes dart around the room, constantly looking for the safe exits. She's always ready for a getaway, that one, but that indicates being prepared for betrayal from others. Parker may not be loyal, but something or someone trained her not to be. What can be done can also be undone, with time. Whether this team will last long enough for that...well, Sophie isn't sure.

Sophie knows better than to ask Nate for the truth about himself. She knows him, after all, and he knows her from before he was a thief with the rest of them. Nate doesn't trust thieves.

But Sophie knows a little already. She knows that Nate used to be the Duke's seer, which is of course a position of great influence and importance. What makes it more interesting is that Nate isn't a seer, not the way he'd claimed to be. He's very good at analysis, taking in large swaths of information and analyzing it and predicting outcomes. His predictions had been good most of the time and occasionally inspired, but he wasn't magic. He was extremely skilled at running scenarios through his head and selecting the most likely.

Sophie goes through a few of her casual information channels and finds out that Nate had a good life before. He was married with a child. Sophie doesn't ask what happened to the wife and child, because in cases like this, there's never a happy answer. It's enough to know that Nate carries a loss with him everywhere. He's still good at analysis, but is he trustworthy? For now, perhaps.

Eliot is the most difficult. Sophie knew he would be. There are no rumors about him; there are no traces of him at all. His name is met with blank stares everywhere, whether real or feigned. Eliot's made himself invisible, and there are only a handful of reasons anyone does that.

In the end, Eliot comes to her, as Parker did. "I hear you've been asking around about us."

"It's nothing personal," Sophie says. "More factfinding than anything else."

"You won't find anything about me," Eliot says.

Sophie shrugs. "I don't expect to."

Eliot looks at her, assessing. "You don't."

Sophie shifts, changing her hair color and eye color, making herself a few inches shorter, altering the shape of her face. "Some of us do our best not to be seen."

Eliot is quiet, but he's the sort who's always quiet in tension. He's choosing not to be dangerous, Sophie knows. He chooses it every minute.

"Some incidents were never entered into the official records," Sophie says. "Like Wolf Woods."

Something flashes in Eliot's eyes that looks very much like regret. "Were you there?"

Sophie shakes her head. "Afterwards."

Eliot nods, denying nothing.

"I've been many people," Sophie says, "but never a judge." She would be the last person to hold anyone's past against them, and suspects that Eliot's past is more complicated than even she knows. No one is only their work.

"You'd better look out," Eliot says, completely deadpan. "I'm starting to like you."

Sophie isn't sure whether to be pleased or disappointed. Being liked is, after all, one of her specialities. "Thank you."

"At least, I don't mind you," Eliot says, and Sophie knows he has seen her reluctance. 

She smiles. "You're not bad yourself."

Eliot shrugs. "Sometimes that's all you can ask for." And he leaves the way he came.

Sophie likes them. At this point, she thinks she likes every single one of them. She hopes this won't be a problem later.


End file.
